Unofficial news and tips about Google

July 21, 2011

Google Docs Lets You Upload 10GB Files

Scott Johnston, Product Manager at Google, announced that Google Docs increased the maximum file size from 1GB to 10GB. That's a really good news, but it's surprising to see that Google Docs only offers 1GB of free storage.

After all, Chromebook users are supposed to store their files online and there are many services that offer more free storage than Google Docs: from Dropbox (2GB) and Box.net (5GB) to Amazon Cloud Drive (5GB) and Microsoft SkyDrive (25GB). While you can buy 20GB of storage for $5/year, it's obvious that more people would upload their files to Google Docs if the service offered at least 20GB of storage for free. Releasing a sync software like Music Manager would make it easier to upload files and to access them from any computer.

Another idea would be to separate online storage from Google Docs apps, so that you can upload Microsoft Word documents and open them using Google's word processing app, but without irreversibly associating them with the app. This way, you could upload files and open them using multiple applications, for example: Google Docs, Zoho Writer and Microsoft Word's Web App.

As disneyfreak said, all Google Doc formatted Docs do not contribute to the online storage limit. Google not only wants you to store your files in the cloud, but to use web apps to create content, rather than desktop apps. Hence the incentive.

That's true, but the files converted to Google Docs formats have their own limitations (1MB for documents, 10MB for presentations, 20MB for spreadsheets).

Google doesn't offer a simple service for uploading files. If you want to upload videos, you can use YouTube or Picasa Web, but only for videos shorter than 15 minutes. If you want to upload images, it's a good idea to use Picasa Web, but only the images < 2048x2048 don't count towards the 1GB quota. Do you want to upload .doc files? Try Google Docs, but you can only edit the file if the size is < 1MB. You can upload 2GB videos for free to YouTube, but Google Docs offers 1GB of free storage for all your files that can't edited using Google Docs apps.

"upload Microsoft Word documents and open them using Google's word processing app, but without irreversibly associating them with the app."

That sounds great, but very hard to implement. Also, I noticed that MS slipped in an update recently that verifies the integrity of Office documents - possibly to prevent Google from processing Office docs?

I use gladinet cloud desktop and it has been wonderful. Worth the money to upload files and folders to google docs. I do think google docs should match microsofts 25 gig storage, 1 gig is really small.

You can upload these huge files ... GREAT! However you still cant upload and have Google Docs convert a word document larger than 1MB !!! or a PPT thats larger than 2MB!!@ COME ON GOOGLE! GET ON THESE!

Okay, I'm going to ask the eternal question one more time. I have a few camcorders and a love taking photos of my kids. To keep up with my storage needs, I make no qualms about going out and buying one 2TB drive after another, to the point where my desktop now has about 6 of them. I keep another set at work for redundancy safety.

Now I'm one man and my video/photo usage is hardly pro-level consumption. And I have to use all this storage space!!

So the question is, how in god's name can Google possibly keep up with the constant demand of millions of people perpetually uploading millions of MBs of video (Youtube) and files (Google Docs) all the time? Where is it possible to keep that much storage space? I've heard of hard drive farms, but really, can they really be big enough to handle all Google does? Don't forget too that they must keep all data in at least duplicate, probably triplicate or more.

Are there random access storage methods that I don't know about other than the HDD?

I'd love insight on this. And I welcome the change to 10GB. Thanks again Google.

I use Apps fo Business, but frankly I've long given up on the Google Docs solution. Dropbox is a lot more flexible and it's the Google Drive that many have been waiting for, for years.Cloud for synching is great, but local storage is still a must... as is the freedom to use files with multiple programs.. like MS Office, which unfortunately is light years ahead of Google Docs.

Matthew, you are definitely on the long tail of consumption. Few people every fill up 500GB of legal content, original or not, much less 1TB (or 12TB ... God, man! That's like 4,000 hours of video at 30 fps).

For me, online storage is the best way to store soft copies of your files. First, online storage systems can be easily accessed, as long as you have internet connection. Second, you can be assured that you’ll store corrupt-free files, so these won’t be deleted. Third, if ever the online site decided to make some changes on their system and they have to delete all the users’ files, they will announce this move and give users ample time to transfer or make copies of their files.